Local cops increasingly turn to social media for preventive policing

MONTEREY PARK - On a cold and drizzly morning at the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Headquarters Bureau, a 25-year-old social media dispatcher is sitting at a computer station in a dimly lit room skimming social media feeds on three large screens.

The tech-savvy civilian dispatcher is part of the bureau's new, 24-hour Electronic Communications Triage or eComm Unit that monitors social media and Internet content, shares information with the public and trains sheriff's officials to use such platforms.

"They're watching social media and Internet comments that pertain to this geographic area, watching what would pertain to our agencies so we can prevent crime, help the public," LASD Capt. Mike Parker said. "And now they're going to be ramping up more and more with more sharing and interacting, especially during crises, whether it's local or regional."

Since launching last September, the eight-member eComm unit has identified a suicidal teen on Instagram, intercepted bomb threats made on Twitter and discovered plans for hundreds of illegal drug parties via Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.

During the search for ex-fugitive cop Christopher Dorner, the unit promoted messages to the public put out by investigating agencies and forwarded clues they spotted on social media to investigators.

At least one social media dispatcher is on duty at all times monitoring content related to keywords of interest, such as LASD and school lockdown, for example.

While many law enforcement agencies monitor social media for criminal activity, Parker said the L.A. County Sheriff's Department is the only agency he's aware of that is monitoring it around the clock and in such a comprehensive way.

In a survey last year of 1,200 federal, state and local law enforcement professionals, four out of five respondents acknowledged using various social media platforms to assist in investigations. The LexisNexis Risk Solutions survey also found that 67 percent of respondents believe social media helps solve crimes more quickly.

Besides using it for investigations, local law enforcement agencies are increasingly turning to social media for "preventive" or "intelligence-led" policing to pre-empt illegal drug parties or unsanctioned protests.

"It's a smart move," Karen North, director of USC's Annenberg Program on Online Communities, said. "All people should know that anything you put up on social media is public. Even if you put it up on your private Facebook feed, you should still assume it's public" since private messages or photos can ultimately be shared by others.

The Sheriff's Department eComm unit has discovered plans for more than 250 illegal parties, which are often held at someone's home, in the agency's jurisdiction. In addition, information about more than 400 of these parties advertising illegal activity have been passed on to neighboring police agencies, Parker said.

Sometimes organizers openly advertise the sale of drugs or "nozz" or nitrous oxide, which is illegal to ingest, and sell alcohol to underage kids. The partygoers usually get high, get a girl drugged up and then sexually assault her. Often gang members will show up, start fighting over a girl and end up shooting or stabbing someone, Parker said.

When such parties are openly advertised on social media, deputies are dispatched to that address to pre-empt any illegal and dangerous activity.

"We are absolutely and completely convinced that we are preventing wild assaults from our efforts with these illegal social media advertised parties," he said.

Parker stressed they are not monitoring specific people - only content - and only monitor public Facebook messages.

The eComm unit, also considered an information-gathering and P.R. tool, is also being used for "reputation management." Sheriff's officials are monitoring comments made about the department, respond to questions and concerns and push its own information out to the public, sheriff's Deputy Tony Moore said.

When a Twitter user recently Tweeted out a complaint about how long he had to wait at a county jail to visit an inmate, Moore reached out to the user, provided him with the phone number for the complaint hotline and a web link to their complaint form.

The Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department main website gets 1.2 million unique views a month. The department has also established separate Facebook pages and Twitter accounts for each of its more than two dozen stations, Parker said.

Social media has also been used to track and locate youth that have indicated they may be suicidal. Last year, the Arcadia Police Department was notified after a Colorado teen, a member of a network of volunteers in search of Tumblr.com users in danger of suicide or depressed, saw that a teenager in Arcadia had posted a photo of herself on Tumblr with cut-up wrists and alarming messages.

An Arcadia police patrol supervisor was able to use information from the microblogging site, Facebook and other department resources to locate a friend of the troubled teen, who was able to direct them to her and get her help.

"We (wouldn't) be able to do that with our conventional means through our record keeping," said Arcadia police Sgt. Tom LeVeque. "Ultimately, we probably would have been able to if we had gone through the schools and backtracked through their records but that takes time. Especially with a case where someone is talking about suicide, we don't have a lot of time."

But not all police departments have embraced all platforms of social media for every use. While the Pasadena Police Department has used information gleaned from social media to guide them in criminal investigations, the department has yet to open a department Facebook or Twitter account.

The department is an avid user of the Nixle alert system, however, and has a website that allows users to supply crime tips, file police reports, see crime data in their neighborhood and get other valuable information, said Pasadena police Commander John E. Perez.

While the department will one day have a Facebook and Twitter account, "we think public access to our website offers people a lot more in-depth ability to get what they need," he said.